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Doug Lee: Macquarie looks to the future

Looking forward to the year ahead, Banks must think about both challenges to overcome and opportunities to be capitalised upon. Doug Lee of Macquarie Bank says that for them the last twelve months have been all about making Macquarie's service proposition more attractive by investing heavily in both people and processes.

Video transcript below:

Anna Temple, Australian Broker Online
Anna Temple: Looking forward to the year ahead, banks must think about both challenges to overcome and opportunities to be capitalised on. Doug Lee of Macquarie Bank says for them the last 12 months have been all about making Macquarie’s service proposition more attractive by investing heavily in both people and processes.

Doug Lee, Head of Mortgage Sales, Macquarie Bank

Doug Lee: What we have really focused on over the last 12 months is to invest very heavily into our back office both from a resource point of view and technology point of view. So when I talk about resources that includes, we have recruited a lot more additional people into our credit teams and we have tried to do that as much as possible ahead of time. So therefore should any volume spikes occur, we have actually got the people already in place to keep our level of service consistent throughout those volume spikes.

Anna Temple: Lee also states that revenue diversification is the largest challenge facing the industry right now and that Macquarie is actively pursuing ways brokers can capitalise on the opportunities appearing, namely through bundling.

Doug Lee: One of the bigger challenges that we are particularly focusing on is around revenue diversification. From a broker’s perspective it’s challenging if you are going to continue to just offer one product. Aggregators are looking at different ways to provide their brokers with diversification opportunities, whether it’s through planning or insurance or other services they can only sell to their client and from a lender perspective that’s something that we are also looking at and acting on quite deliberately around bundling. So you know, if we are providing a broker an opportunity not just to sell a home loan but also an insurance policy, we will then let them share in the revenue.

Anna Temple: Finally Lee believes that it is paramount that the process is kept as simple as possible, so brokers can maintain their primary focus, the loan.

Doug Lee: Take it even a step further and look at how can you make that process as simple as possible for the broker so that their core focus is still their core focus which is the loan. But the any ancillary products or services that add on, how do you make that efficient and easy as possible for the broker to bring that into a conversation with the client that don’t distract from what they are actually, how they have to do it.

Anna Temple: This is Anna Temple reporting for Australian Broker Online.